Goodbye McGinnis

As has been noted, here and elsewhere, the Robert McGinnis gallery of paperback covers maintained by Graeme Flanagan is coming down. Apparently it was McGinnis himself who requested they be taken down, and he has even retired his own Web site because of copyright concerns. In an email you can read here, Flanagan quotes McGinnis as saying that he is limiting access to his work because of "the flagrant abuse of the copyrights of (his) paintings and name out of context on the internet.” I'm not sure if he was specifically referring to Flanagan's site, which isn't harming McGinnis in any way. It's not as if Flanagan was selling unauthorized prints of McGinnis' book covers or something of that nature. He was sharing his love of McGinnis' work. Sure, McGinnis is a professional illustrator, and he does have an interest in protecting his copyrights, but if no one can see your work that defeats the purpose of creating anything at all, doesn't it?